Dread

Artist Anna Meyer (geboren 1964 in Schaffhausen)

Object typePainting
MediumÖl auf Leinwand
Dimensions
ungerahmt: 130 × 200 × 2 cm
SignatureSign. und dat. auf der Rückseite: GRAUEN Anna Meyer 2025
Inventory number12356
Location Belvedere 21
Credit LineAnkauf von der Galerie Krobath, Wien
Anna Meyer’s distinctive visual worlds combine vivid colors, surreal scenarios, and symbolism with a sharp critique of social conditions. The artist’s feminist stance is both a fundamental premise and an urgent necessity for engaging with the present. In Dread, Meyer’s frequently recurring motif of the traumatized female figure is staged in a dystopian situation in front of the Vienna Secession—plagued by digestive problems, surrounded by embryos, and beneath a dark cloud. Her trauma is rooted in societal expectations, historical experiences—represented in what Meyer calls the “umbilical cord of history”— and a future fraught with reactionary developments. At the same time, Meyer references depictions of mythological creatures of horror in Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, which is on display inside the Secession. These figures symbolize a dread that Meyer transposes into the present against the backdrop of current crises.

The Mirror Licks the Painting